Parents of the HS Class of 2026 (Part 2)

[TheMonaLisa]

Now that it’s officially OFFICIAL, I’m going to share what I shared on my Chance Me post from last year!

Chance Me/Match Me for my son - NoVA Resident with 3.9 UW, 1460 SAT, <$50K, for English/Creative Writing & History Double Major

I just have a few minutes for an update: S26’s top 5 included: Kenyon, Susquehanna, UVA, Va Tech, and William & Mary. All of these schools were right at or below our budget! He then narrowed it down to Kenyon, Susquehanna, UVA, and Va Tech for various reasons. You cannot get a more mixed bag of schools than this! Haha! We went back to each school. Someone here suggested we record/jot down S26’s thoughts after each visit and to observe his reactions. We ended up using these observations/thoughts as additional info for his pros and cons list/talk with me and my husband, and boy did it help S26 tremendously! We tried to level the “playing field” as well so S26 requested to sit in on a class at each school, have a chat with professors and students. These experiences, while varied a bit, helped inform S26 of his decision too! Interestingly, S26 did note the vibe at each school, but his decision wasn’t so much steered by vibe. His decision was steered by strength of the school’s English/…

and Part 2 here LOL

Chance Me/Match Me for my son - NoVA Resident with 3.9 UW, 1460 SAT, <$50K, for English/Creative Writing & History Double Major

I did not mean to leave my last comment unfinished. I had to rush out of the house to get to a doctor’s appointment, haha! Almost a year ago now, S26 was drawn to SLACs, specifically Kenyon, and he was open to other SLACs as far as Kenyon from home. We visited Kenyon 3-4 times, I think, and that last visit made him realize that he prefers being closer to home! He loved his time at Kenyon last summer for their summer workshop, but he admitted that it was too remote for him. This secretly crushed me and my husband. We thought Kenyon was his place - the students there seemed to be his people, and they offered merit/grants that brought COA below his in-state options. But we could not make him choose it - we just couldn’t. S26 also realized that while he loves being in smaller creative writing classes, he admitted that once in awhile he would like to fade in the background and be in a larger class! This was also a 180 from last year! He realized that he wants a larger school than Kenyon a…